The “biopic” has deliv­ered dra­mat­ic retellings of famous fig­ures’ lives since the very ear­li­est days of cin­e­ma. We hunger, it seems, to see more-or-less-faith­ful approx­i­ma­tions of our idols stride across the screen, enact­ing events wit­nessed by mil­lions and those hid­den away from every­one. In the case of pop­u­lar musi­cians, these tend to involve epic alco­hol and drug use, tumul­tuous love affairs, sta­di­um-sized tri­umphs and the crush­ing defeats of falling out of cul­tur­al favor. Such scenes can prove dif­fi­cult to recre­ate con­vinc­ing­ly, espe­cial­ly the music and sig­na­ture moves of world famous stars.

Con­dens­ing life­times into mar­ketable nar­ra­tive films that hit typ­i­cal Hol­ly­wood beats also involves tak­ing a fair amount of license. And as a spate of arti­cles like “Every­thing Bohemi­an Rhap­sody Got Wrong About Fred­die Mercury’s Life” tes­ti­fy, the new biopic about Queen singer Fred­die Mer­cury, played in the film by Rami Malek, twists or total­ly changes key events in Mercury’s life. The film re-imag­ines, for exam­ple, how Mer­cury met his band­mem­bers, his girl­friend Mary, and Jim Hut­ton, his long­time and final part­ner.

And, odd­ly, it imag­ines Mer­cury telling Queen about his HIV diag­no­sis dur­ing rehearsals for their 1985 Live Aid appear­ance, which it stages as a reunion, show­ing the band as hav­ing been on hia­tus while mem­bers pur­sued solo projects. The truth, how­ev­er, is that Mer­cury didn’t receive his diag­no­sis until 1987, and his band­mates weren’t ful­ly aware of his ill­ness until 1989. And when the band came togeth­er to per­form at Live Aid, they had just toured the world in sup­port of their 1984 album The Works.

Such dis­tor­tions are a lit­tle per­plex­ing giv­en that Bri­an May and Roger Tay­lor served as cre­ative con­sul­tants, sit­ting in on set dur­ing the pro­duc­tion. The film has been also been accused of “straight­wash­ing” Mercury’s sex­u­al­i­ty and gloss­ing over his roots and reli­gion. You’ll have to eval­u­ate the mer­its of these charges for your­self, but the case remains that if we want to know what Mercury’s life was real­ly like, we need to sup­plant the enter­tain­ing fic­tion with the even more com­pelling truth.

The video above helps in some small part to fill gaps in our knowl­edge of Mercury’s last years, edit­ing togeth­er inter­views, TV clips, and per­for­mance footage. Although Mer­cury was very sick dur­ing this peri­od, you would hard­ly have known it, and most of the peo­ple around him didn’t. He con­tin­ued to write and record, work­ing hard on Queen’s last album, Innu­en­do, released in the final year of his life.

We learn that his clos­est friends, col­leagues, and band­mem­bers were in denial, “right up to the last minute,” as Bri­an May says, about the sever­i­ty of his dis­ease. “We sort of refused to know” how bad it was, May admits. Mer­cury him­self pushed the knowl­edge away, immers­ing him­self in his music to keep going. “The sick­er Fred­die got,” says Roger Tay­lor, “the more he seemed to need to record to give him­self some­thing to do, you know, some sort of rea­son to get up… so it was a peri­od of fair­ly intense work.”

Mercury’s ear­ly death was trag­ic, but he met it hero­ical­ly. And though his band­mates strug­gled to face the truth, they ral­lied around him in sup­port, both in life and in death. When the tabloid press vicious­ly slan­dered and attacked him, May and Tay­lor went on tele­vi­sion to defend their friend. “He had a very respon­si­ble atti­tude to every­one that he was close to and he was a very gen­er­ous and car­ing per­son to all the peo­ple that came through his life and more than that you can’t ask,” said May in a 1991 inter­view appear­ance after Mer­cury passed away. “I tell you we do feel absolute­ly bound to stick up for him,” added Tay­lor, “because he can’t stick up for him­self any­more, you know?”

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Behind-the-Scenes Footage From Fred­die Mercury’s Final Video Per­for­mance

A First Glimpse of Rami Malek as Fred­die Mer­cury, Com­pared with the Real Fred­die Mer­cury Per­form­ing at Live Aid in 1985

What Made Fred­die Mer­cury the Great­est Vocal­ist in Rock His­to­ry? The Secrets Revealed in a Short Video Essay

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

For met­al­heads and lovers of gui­tar rock dark, heavy, and chock full of ref­er­ences to sex, demons, tarot cards, and fan­ta­sy nov­els, the birth of Led Zep­pelin should be cel­e­brat­ed like Christ­mas. The 50th anniver­sary of the band should be a non­stop glob­al cacoph­o­ny of awk­ward “Stair­way to Heav­en” cov­ers. Yes, there are oth­er things going on in the world, ter­ri­ble things—things that would be that much hard­er to bear with­out music as fiery and bom­bas­tic as that con­coct­ed by the com­bo of Page/Plant/Jones/Bonham.

In 1968, the band seemed to rock­et out of nowhere—erroneously billed as “Len Zef­flin” in its ear­li­est taped gig at a Gon­za­ga Uni­ver­si­ty Gym­na­si­um as an open­ing act for “The Vanil­la Fudge” (hear the boot­leg above).

But kids in the know knew them as recent­ly-ex-Yard­bird Jim­my Page’s new project, orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed to be a super­group star­ring Jeff Beck and The Who’s Kei­th Moon and John Entwistle. This “dry run,” notes music jour­nal­ist Kei­th Shad­wick, was Page’s “first attempt to put some­thing togeth­er that was real­ly heavy­weight.”

Page’s friend from his ses­sion days, John Paul Jones, end­ed up on bass for the only record­ing ses­sion, the project fell apart, and instead Page recruit­ed two not-yet-super­stars, Plant and Bon­ham from Band of Joy, to form what was first known as the New Yard­birds before a cease and desist let­ter. Accounts of who came up with the replace­ment name—first “Led Bal­loon,” a vari­a­tion on the phrase for a big flop—vary. “But it was said after­wards that that’s what it could have been called,” remem­bers Page. “Because Moony want­ed to get out of The Who, and so did John Entwistle…. Instead, it didn’t hap­pen.”

Yet, it hap­pened. Less deter­mined musi­cians might have scrapped the idea and joined anoth­er band. Page, known as “Mis­ter Cool” for his pro­fes­sion­al­ism, had a dis­tinct vision for what he want­ed and was hell­bent on man­i­fest­ing it. “Page said he had Led Zeppelin’s sound, and first songs, ful­ly formed in his mind before the Yard­birds were even done,” Andrew Dal­ton writes at The Chica­go Tri­bune.“I just knew what way to go,” said Page. “It was in my instinct.”

He con­jured the mag­ic with a cer­e­mo­ni­al instrument—a 1959 Fend­er Tele­cast­er he got from Jeff Beck, on which he paint­ed a psy­che­del­ic drag­on. He called the gui­tar “the Excal­ibur” (now a sig­na­ture gui­tar that you can buy in repli­ca next year).

After tours of Scan­di­navia and Eng­land as the New Yard­birds, Led Zep­pelin made their for­mal debut at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Sur­rey on Octo­ber 25th, 1968, then they toured the U.S. and released their debut album in Jan­u­ary. Here, you can hear and see some of the band’s first intro­duc­tions to the world, in the boot­leg Gon­za­ga con­cert record­ing at the top, a filmed 1968 per­for­mance of “Dazed and Con­fused,” fur­ther up, and, just above, a killer live set from March of ’69 at the Glad­saxe Teen Club in Den­mark.

It’s no great sur­prise that they sound­ed as good as they did from the start, nor that they had such savvy and poise. Zep­pelin was “typ­i­cal,” writes Shad­wick, “of this third wave [of British bands] in that… all were expe­ri­enced and thor­ough­ly pro­fes­sion­al even though they were still very young, and they had more than a pass­ing knowl­edge of how the indus­try worked before they even signed their first deal as a unit.” But what con­tin­ues to aston­ish about Led Zeppelin’s debut is just how heavy it still sounds, 50 years lat­er. Their dis­tant prog­e­ny may have tak­en the tem­plate to absurd extremes, but even in the bleak­est, most blis­ter­ing black met­al we hear Zeppelin’s musi­cal DNA.

As one ear­ly fan who caught them at that ear­ly Gon­za­ga show lat­er remarked, “It was like, after that, psy­che­delia was dead and heavy met­al was born, all in a three-hour show.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Led Zeppelin’s First Record­ed Con­cert Ever (1968)

Whole Lot­ta Led Zep­pelin: Live at the Roy­al Albert Hall and The Song Remains the Same–the Full Shows

Decon­struct­ing Led Zeppelin’s Clas­sic Song ‘Ram­ble On’ Track by Track: Gui­tars, Bass, Drums & Vocals

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

Approach­ing Bob Dylan’s body of work as a new­com­er can be intim­i­dat­ing. The Nobel Lau­re­ate now gets taught at Har­vard and Prince­ton, com­pared to Vir­gil and Ovid, Yeats and Joyce. Div­ing into Dylan’s own lit­er­ary influ­ences requires a for­mi­da­ble read­ing list. But as Sean Wilentz, con­sum­mate Dylan fan, Prince­ton pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry, and author of Bob Dylan in Amer­i­ca, points out, the Dylan lega­cy car­ries so much weight not only because of the singer’s vora­cious read­ing habits, but because he emerged “in a cul­ture in which song­writ­ing has always been a major force” on the cul­ture.

New Dylan fans come to him through his influ­ence on the past 50 years of pop­u­lar music, and under­stand him through the influ­ence of the first 50 years of 20th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can music on him. He’s cit­ed by such diverse leg­ends as Hen­drix, Bowie, and Boy George—at one time every­one want­ed to be Dylan, or to write like him, at least—but one rea­son so many have imi­tat­ed him is because he acquired his con­sid­er­able depth by imi­tat­ing oth­ers.

Grow­ing up in the bleak sur­round­ings of Hib­bing, Min­neso­ta, “a good place to leave,” he said, Dylan spent his time absorb­ing all he could from the Delta blues, the Carter Fam­i­ly, John­ny Cash, Lit­tle Richard, and Elvis. Like the best of his own imi­ta­tors, Dylan devel­oped the abil­i­ty to trans­mute his influ­ences into some­thing new through close study, crit­i­cal appre­ci­a­tion, and just plain-old goof­ing around.

In his ear­li­est known record­ings, made in 1958 in Hib­bing with his home­town friend John Bucklen, Dylan does a lit­tle bit of all three, but most­ly he sings ram­shackle cov­ers of rhythm and blues songs on an acoustic gui­tar, hon­ing his tal­ent for bar­rel­ing through solo per­for­mances two years before he hit the stages of Green­wich Village’s cof­fee­house folk scene.

The John Bucklen tape opens up a 5‑hour Youtube col­lec­tion fea­tur­ing record­ings from 1958 to 1965, which you can stream above. It’s a set of “almost all the ear­li­est tapes Bob made before sign­ing up with Colum­bia Records,” notes the Youtube uploader. (“Some of the ear­ly stuff is dis­mal at best,” one review­er of the col­lec­tion writes, “but its his­tor­i­cal impor­tance can­not be over­stat­ed.”) From the ’58 home record­ings, over­dubbed with Bucklen’s lat­er com­men­tary, we move to the so-called Min­neso­ta Par­ty Tape, “a 35 minute record­ing in Bob’s apart­ment in Min­neapo­lis” fea­tur­ing his ren­di­tions of some tra­di­tion­al songs like “John­ny I hard­ly Knew You” and “Streets of Glo­ry.”

This tape also shows the pre­dom­i­nat­ing influ­ence of Woody Guthrie on Dylan at the time, the song­writer whom he most mod­eled him­self after in the ear­ly sixties—later writ­ing that he aimed to be “Guthrie’s great­est disciple”—and who pops up again and again in near­ly all of these record­ings after 1960. In Jan­u­ary of 1961, Dylan moved to New York to vis­it Guthrie, then dying of Huntington’s dis­ease, and began pick­ing up Irish folk songs and African Amer­i­can spir­i­tu­als from Dave Van Ronk, Odet­ta, and oth­er down­town folk singers. He inte­grates these styles into his Guthrie imi­ta­tion and picks up bits of Pete Seeger, Hank Williams, Blind Lemon Jef­fer­son, and Jesse Fuller from his cov­ers of their songs.

In tapes from 1962–63, we hear home record­ing ver­sions of well-known orig­i­nals from his first two albums—“A Hard Rain’s A‑Gonna Fall,” “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”—and hear in them the cumu­la­tive lay­er­ing of influ­ence from Dylan’s years of appren­tice­ship. The entire col­lec­tion, which includes inter­views with Bil­ly James and Steve Allen and per­for­mances on radio and TV, shows Dylan “evolv­ing from a young kid in Min­neso­ta to a super­star in 1965 before going elec­tric… an amaz­ing look at a young Bob Dylan becom­ing a leg­end in front of you.” Key to that evo­lu­tion was his tal­ent for cre­ative imi­ta­tion of tra­di­tion­al Amer­i­can music and its great­est inter­preters.

See the full track­list in the com­ment sec­tion of the video, and note that the third and fourth seg­ments are in the wrong order in the Youtube video above.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Bob Dylan Demos: They Are A‑Streamin’

A Mas­sive 55-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Bob Dylan Songs: Stream 763 Tracks

Hear Bob Dylan’s New­ly-Released Nobel Lec­ture: A Med­i­ta­tion on Music, Lit­er­a­ture & Lyrics

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Roger Waters has always had an ego to match the size of his musi­cal ambi­tions, a char­ac­ter trait that didn’t help him get along with his Pink Floyd band­mates. But it gave him the con­fi­dence to write dar­ing oper­at­ic albums like The Wall and stage the mas­sive the­atri­cal shows for which the band became well-known. He’s a nat­ur­al sto­ry­teller, eager to use music to com­mu­ni­cate not only tren­chant polit­i­cal cri­tique, but the emo­tion­al lives of char­ac­ters caught up in the machi­na­tions of war­mon­gers and prof­i­teers.

Through­out the auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal The Wall runs a nar­ra­tive of wartime trau­ma, a thread that turned into The Final Cut, essen­tial­ly a solo album that brought togeth­er Waters’ cri­tique of Mar­garet Thatch­er and the Falk­lands War with a memo­r­i­al for WWII British ser­vice­men, so many of whom, like his father, gave their lives for a coun­try Waters felt betrayed their mem­o­ry. While his solo career and activism have focused square­ly on anti-war mes­sages, he has shown much sym­pa­thy for the com­mon sol­dier.

Waters’ lat­est project, then, is fit­ting­ly called The Soldier’s Sto­ry, but this time, he is nei­ther author nor com­pos­er. Rather, the piece comes from 100 years ago, adapt­ed by Igor Stravin­sky from an old Russ­ian folk tale. In Stravin­sky’s ver­sion, a WWI sol­dier relin­quish­es his violin—and his musi­cal ability—to the dev­il in exchange for a book that pre­dicts the future econ­o­my. The sol­dier uses the book to get rich, then gives up his for­tune to regain his tal­ent, heal a dying princess, and beat the dev­il, for a time.

In its time­less, arche­typ­al way, the sto­ry evokes some of the sprawl­ing themes Waters has tak­en on many times, with a sim­i­lar­ly sar­don­ic tone. But unlike the rock star’s big the­atri­cal pro­duc­tions, Stravin­sky’s piece is a sim­ple moral­i­ty play, full of humor and an inno­v­a­tive use of jazz and rag­time ele­ments in a clas­si­cal set­ting. There are three speak­ing parts—the sol­dier, the dev­il, and the nar­ra­tor. Waters has added oth­ers to this updat­ed ver­sion: “the bloke in the pub” and the king, who remains mute in the orig­i­nal. He not only nar­rates the piece, but plays all of the char­ac­ters as well.

Work­ing with “sev­en musi­cians asso­ci­at­ed with the Bridge­hamp­ton Cham­ber Music Fes­ti­val,” reports Con­se­quence of Sound. The ensem­ble seeks to “hon­or Stravinsky’s work while rein­ter­pret­ing it for a new audi­ence.” Stravin­sky him­self record­ed the piece three times, “first in 1932,” notes James Leonard at All­Mu­sic, “then again in 1954, and final­ly in 1961.” The last record­ing saw a re-release in 2007 with Jere­my Irons dubbed in as nar­ra­tor. Oth­er famous actors who have record­ed it include John Giel­gud as the nar­ra­tor in a set of per­for­mances from the ear­ly 70s and Dame Har­ri­et Wal­ter in the role in a 2017 release.

These are huge dra­mat­ic shoes to fill. A press release for the new adap­ta­tion, dis­play­ing Waters’ char­ac­ter­is­tic self-con­fi­dence (or maybe hubris), assures us that he felt up to the task: “He has want­ed for a long time to engage more deeply with the work of a com­pos­er whose weight and occa­sion­al inac­ces­si­bil­i­ty may per­haps have much in com­mon” with his own, we’re told. What­ev­er affini­ties might exist between Waters’ pro­gres­sive rock operas and the rad­i­cal mod­ernist sym­phonies of Stravin­sky, The Soldier’s Sto­ry seems like a nat­ur­al fit for Waters’ lit­er­ary sen­si­bil­i­ties.

See the offi­cial trail­er above, and order the album here.

via Con­se­quence of Sound

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Pink Floyd’s “Com­fort­ably Numb” Was Born From an Argu­ment Between Roger Waters & David Gilmour

Igor Stravin­sky Remem­bers the “Riotous” Pre­miere of His Rite of Spring in 1913: “They Were Very Shocked. They Were Naive and Stu­pid Peo­ple.”

The Night When Char­lie Park­er Played for Igor Stravin­sky (1951)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

Pho­to by Man Alive!, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

“There’s only a cou­ple of peo­ple I’ve felt gen­uine­ly fright­ened tak­ing pho­tos in front of live because the per­son is out of con­trol,” says Man­ches­ter-based rock pho­tog­ra­ph­er Kevin Cum­mins. The first was Joy Division’s Ian Cur­tis, “and Iggy Pop was anoth­er.” Iggy’s onstage mania rivals any lead singer, liv­ing or dead. The intim­i­dat­ing Hen­ry Rollins tells a sto­ry about his one and only attempt to upstage his idol. He describes Iggy as “two guys. There’s Jim (Jim Osterberg)—‘Hey, my name’s Jim, good to meet you, man, how are you?’ And then there’s Iggy Pop,” Rollins says, and does an impres­sion of a seething mad­man. “Jim is cool. Iggy is like this ter­ri­fy­ing mon­ster of rock and roll.”

You’ve prob­a­bly heard the sto­ries of those ear­ly Stooges gigs. Smear­ing him­self with peanut but­ter, cut­ting him­self open with bro­ken glass and leap­ing into the audi­ence long before stage-div­ing was some­thing peo­ple did. We’ve also heard a lot more from Jim these days: shirt­less, but “lucid, intel­li­gent,” and dis­play­ing excel­lent recall in his inter­view with Marc Maron in the comedian’s garage; most­ly clothed, bespec­ta­cled, and pro­fes­so­r­i­al in his deliv­ery of the BBC’s 2014 John Peel Lec­ture.

In inter­views and on his radio show, includ­ing a recent two-hour Bowie trib­ute, he is wit­ty, gre­gar­i­ous, and some­times wist­ful. But Iggy’s still pret­ty ter­ri­fy­ing onstage even into his elder-states­man-hood. Wit­ness the stage plan drawn up in 2006 by Jos Grain, pro­duc­tion man­ag­er for the 21st-cen­tu­ry tour­ing ver­sion of Iggy and The Stooges.

we like to keep it as clear as pos­si­ble, espe­cial­ly at the front.

This means all cables for the down­stage wedges etc must be run off the front in the pit, not accross the front of the stage.

My insur­ance does­n’t cov­er me for allow­ing rock­stars to fall off the front of the stage.

No light­ing or mon­i­tor cables, no pow­er cables, no toy robots, no tele­vi­sion evan­ge­lists, no tele­vi­sion cam­era­men, no sub­stances relat­ed to the man­u­fac­ture of cre­osote, no plas­tic sea­hors­es, no baili­wicks, no crepes­cules, no kooks and espe­cial­ly NO CAMERAMEN.

This way Iggy can run around in his cus­tom­ary man­ner like a crazed run­ning around-type-thing and we can all relax in a haze of self-sat­is­fied pan­ic. [all sic]

This excerpt comes from the sav­age­ly fun­ny, and total­ly bonkers, text of Grain’s “Mar­velous and Most Instruc­tive Infor­ma­tion Doc­u­ment: Includ­ing Utter­ly Con­fus­ing Com­ments and Asides”— oth­er­wise known as the con­tract rid­er, the spec­i­fi­ca­tions detail­ing the band’s require­ments. “When you’re as leg­endary as Iggy Pop,” writes Luka Osbourne at Enmore Audio, “you tend to get away with a lot.”

Grain’s rider—a hilar­i­ous write-up prone to pro­fane fugue states full of jar­ring non-sequiturs and riotous asides—pushes the genre as far as it can go. “If there was a Gram­my for ‘best con­tract rid­er,’ writes Bri­an Mack­ay at the Spring­field, Illi­nois State Jour­nal-Reg­is­ter, “Iggy and the Stooges would retire the cat­e­go­ry.” A note about a gui­tar rack sud­den­ly swerves into the fol­low­ing rever­ie:

Horse v Pan­da? I think the pan­da might just win it if he man­aged to get on the horse’s back and sink his teeth and claws into its neck. With­out get­ting kicked in the bol­locks, of course. Two hooves in a Pan­da’s gonads would prob­a­bly bring vic­to­ry to the horse, though I doubt it would cel­e­brate much. Hors­es arent big cham­pagne drinkers.
And fuck­ing Grand Prix dri­vers just squirt it all over each oth­er.

The requests get ridicu­lous­ly spe­cif­ic, but it’s still more or less stan­dard rock star stuff (noth­ing on the order of Van Halen’s “no brown M&M’s”) …or is it…? When we get down to the require­ments for Iggy’s dress­ing room, Grain asks for:

Some­body dressed as Bob Hope doing fan­tas­tic Bob Hope imper­son­ations and telling all those hilar­i­ous Bob Hope jokes about golf and Hol­ly­wood and Bing Cros­by. Oh God, I wish I’d been alive in those days, so that Bob Hope could have come and enter­tained me in some World War 2 hell-hole before I went off and got shot. What joy they must have expe­ri­enced…

OR 

Sev­en dwarves, dressed up as those dwarves out of that mar­velous Walt Dis­ney film about the woman who goes to sleep for a hun­dred years after bit­ing a poi­soned dwarf, or maybe after prick­ing her fin­ger on a rather sharp apple… or some­thing. What was the name of that film? Was it Cin­derel­la? Taller peo­ple are accept­able, of course. It’s atti­tude, more than height, that’s impor­tant here. Don’t for­get the pointy hats!

As for the band’s needs, oth­er ref­er­ences to pan­das come up. The bass play­er needs three Mar­shall VBA Bass Ampli­fiers. “Please make sure they’re good ones,” Grain writes, “or we’ll all end up as worm­like web-based life forms in the bass player’s online lit­er­ary dia­hor­rea. Hon­est­ly. He’s like a sort of inter­net Pepys or Boswell, except with­out the gout and the syphilis. For all I know.” The Stooges’ bass play­er, by the way, is punk leg­end Mike Watt, whose tour diaries real­ly are a species of lit­er­ary genius.

Some­times when I get down about the state of rock and roll, I remem­ber that Iggy Pop is still alive and run­ning around shirt­less onstage like a lunatic at 71. And I remem­ber this rid­er exists. Read the whole thing here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed Marc Maron Recalls Inter­view­ing a Shirt­less Iggy Pop in LA Garage

Prof. Iggy Pop Deliv­ers the BBC’s 2014 John Peel Lec­ture on “Free Music in a Cap­i­tal­ist Soci­ety”

Stream Iggy Pop’s Two-Hour Radio Trib­ute to David Bowie

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.